There is no word for it in our language, and I have come to believe that is not an accident, that we have left it unnamed on purpose, because to name it would be to admit that it can happen, and no parent can live while admitting that.

We have a word for a child who loses parents.

We have a word for a person who loses a spouse.

We have no word for me, for what I became in that corridor, because the thing itself is against nature, a violation of the one rule every parent believes in without ever saying it aloud: that we go first.

Chloe was supposed to bury me.